Geezer Test

[Clodfobble]

Speaking of Duck and Cover, we watched "The Iron Giant" tonight and it had a really amusing little scene involving duck and cover drills...

[Tonchi]

Originally Posted by footfootfoot

Tonchi:

I have heard, and this may be one of those viscous rumors/urban legends that all those fallout shelters etc. we had in the US during the cold war (such as gymnasiums and school basements) weren't intended to help anyone survive the blast or firestorm, but rather created a tidy way of dealing with the inevitable, unmanagable population of rotting corpses. "Be calm and follow the signs pointing to your nearest mass grave."

That way when the folks in the really deep holes came out to salvage what they could, they wouldn't face the overwhelming pile of decay, it would be neatly below ground already.

It could have been just the P.O.V. of my hippy science teacher.

I hadn't heard that before, it sounds like some marvelous attempt at gallows humor. Actually, although I remember seeing the "home size" shelters advertised on tv and in newspapers, nobody I ever met had one. I've seen films of the backhoes digging the holes for the drop-in module types, and remember thinking it looked more like a porta-potty than something that could protect a family of 4. In those days we were all very naive as to the lingering effects of a blast, and that is why John Wayne and a lot of Nevada residents are no longer with us, not to mention anybody who had been on a ship at Bikini Atol. The silly little ventilation chimneys these shelters had look very unscientific to us now, but in those days everybody acted like only the largest cities would ever be attacked anyway. But before the Cold War ended and all the missles were counted, there was a bomb somewhere pointed at every city of note, coast to coast.

The main uban legend they have spread in my area is that the Central Valley of California will purposely be spared the radiation because the Russians had specific plans for us. Neutron bombs and bioagents would be used instead to eradicate the population without disturbing the facilities and farmland. Since this area produces much of the food in our country, they intended it for their own use. Possible truth? Who knows. Hope I don't have to find out.

[xoxoxoBruce]

I've a gut feeling that all these "secret plans" attribute the US and Soviet leaders with much more control and much more intelligence than is warranted. I think the reality was, when we don't know what to do next, push "the button" and see what happens.

[MaggieL]

Originally Posted by Tonchi

Nope, my perception is based on a sister who has lived in Switzerland for 10 years and who is required by law to keep a fully stocked shelter in her basement. Then there is my cousin who is married to a Chinese national ...
So you are quite mistaken on this count.

I was of course suggesting that your perception of Americans that might be a bit myopic. But clearly you've been everywhere and seen everything.

Or your relatives have.

Originally Posted by Tonchi

And may I ask, if the government is NOT required to take care of the population in this area, how do you think it will get done?

You think it's possible to require the government to do something? I just think it's foolish to expect "the government" to take care of you...especially in view of their track record in other endeavors. Education, for example. I suppose we could pass a law like the Swiss one requiring people to provide and equip their own shelters.

How well do you think that would work? Seriously.

Of course, Swiss citizens subject to conscription in emergency (all the males from 20 to 40, same law that requires shelters) are required to keep an assault rifle and know how to use it, too. And it also requires you to make any space in your shelter available for government use.

I'm sure Swiss civil defense is admirable in principle (although I don't evny them their tax rates). Apparently they were spending at the level of US$33 per capita on civil defence in the 1980s...probably gone up quite a bit since then. Of course they only have about 7.5 million people. (Compare the Philadelphia metro area at 5 million.)

Many Americans have made preparations for emergencies. They just don't talk about it a lot...perhaps so others of a more socialist bent (you know, the ones who want "the government " to take care of them) won't decide it would only be fair for them to share in the event of an emergency.

Which brings us back to that assault rifle thing. :-)

Speaking of "fallout shelters", it's quite true they were not intended to guard against blast or fire, and that's why they were callled "fallout shelters" rather than "bomb shelters".

The yellow trefoil sign indicated the presence of a public building that might offer some modest protection from prompt radiation from a nuke going off some distance away as well as shielding from the dusting of fallout afterwards. They were stocked with emergency water in 55-gal drums, crackers and hard candy sealed in cans, and simple radiation monitoring equipment. The hope was that folks who took shelter might be able to survive on the emergency rations inside the building until the outside radiation levels became survivable. Obviously the story for anybody close enough to a strike to be affected by blast or firestorm was pretty grim.

Nobody with any sense at all thought these very minimal measures offered any garauntees. It was just viewed as better than nothing for those not close enough to a target to have been immediately crisped...which was a substantial fraction of the entire poplulation, even more so back then.

At the time I was living here in Philly--with the Frankford Arsenal, the Navy Yard, NAS Willow Grove (key antisub base), Univac and GE Missile and Space division, we were pretty sure the town was worth a warhead or two,

[Urbane Guerrilla]

Those viscous rumors really stick around, don't they, Foot?

[Urbane Guerrilla]

As a wee tad of about five, I remember Meeker, Colorado as not having direct dial in 1961-63: you lifted the receiver, the operator would say, "Number please," and you'd give her all seven digits and she'd connect you. I don't know what you did to dial out of town, but that was the local procedure. Meeker was not a big town, and our street didn't get asphalt until right about the middle of our stay.

Leaping to another comment, having grown up in the sixties myself, my experience says Tim Leary was a dope. Too, I'd have trouble awarding the "foul decade" prize to any decade I've inhabited -- too much good on the other end of the seesaw from too much bad. The Seventies did have some spectacular stupidities. Perhaps the dumbest of these was disco: dumb music doesn't make it.

[capnhowdy]

Speaking of "fallout shelters", it's quite true they were not intended to guard against blast or fire, and that's why they were callled "fallout shelters" rather than "bomb shelters".

Most people around here called them bomb shelters, and a few folks called them storm shelters.
I knew lots of folks who had dug a huge hole and pushed an old car in & covered it up to use as a 'bum' shelter. As a child they were very scary places. But cool.

[wolf]

I also take the position that fallout shelters are not bomb shelters.

I vaguely recall there being a CD sign on the front of my hospital when I started working there, but it's since been removed. I also remember a number of buildings on my college campus having that designation, and there were also actual bomb shelters on the property.

[xoxoxoBruce]

Originally Posted by Urbane Guerrilla

As a wee tad of about five, I remember Meeker, Colorado as not having direct dial in 1961-63: ~~snip~~, having grown up in the sixties myself, ~~snip~~

You didn't grow up in the 60s.

[wolf]

Are you implying that UG never grew up?

[MaggieL]

Originally Posted by capnhowdy

Most people around here called them bomb shelters, and a few folks called them storm shelters.

Some folks did build real "bomb shelters"....I was referring to the then-ubiquitous Federally-stocked fallout shelter sites, denoted by a sign like this one:.



Here's the crackers/candy/water/dosimeter/geiger type equipment I referred to:



http://www.civildefensemuseum.com/shelsupp.html

[capnhowdy]

It all looks so morbid.
I've heard them called fallout shelters, but rarely in the southeast.
Most of the older folks I knew would tell you that a nuclear attack would be 'the end of the world'. I believed it. I was very sure it would put your eye out.

[xoxoxoBruce]

Besides.....the crackers tasted like shit.

[MaggieL]

Originally Posted by xoxoxoBruce

Besides.....the crackers tasted like shit.

Indeed. The candy kepy pretty well though. According to an article at that site the crackers were eventually recalled. How long they were speced to last, I don't know.

As for "morbid"...well...in those days the risk of nuclear war was quite real. In fact--although we didn't know it at the time--one Soviet sub sent to break the Cuban blockade was armed with nuclear torpedos. And they had tacical nukes that would have been used in the event of an invasion. It would only have taken one small miscaclulation on either side to light the big fuse.

T'was a very, very near thing. I'd hate to think we might have failed to prepare for what might have happened because it was "morbid". There was indeed a high level of fatalism in those days--one that is probably diffcult for somebody growing up post-Cold-War to imagine.

[xoxoxoBruce]

That would have been bad, by the time the Cuban thing happened we'd already hit the supplies in the dorm basement fallout shelter.